


Guilty of Getting Caught

by kayura_sanada



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Actions Don't Exist In A Vacuum, Consequences, Established Relationship, M/M, Nightmares, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Trouble In Paradise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-28
Updated: 2017-08-28
Packaged: 2018-12-20 23:28:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11931582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kayura_sanada/pseuds/kayura_sanada
Summary: Steve and Tony have been together for months. Tony, however, still refuses to sleep next to Steve. Steve wants to know why.





	Guilty of Getting Caught

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CAPSING](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CAPSING/gifts).



> I kept struggling with what to do with this story, until I changed the POV and decided to try to emulate your style of writing. The piece this originally hailed from is little more than a sentence now, so think it of it more as an appreciation/love piece, I guess? I know it’s poorly done, but maybe you'll enjoy it, anyway. May your life be filled with happiness! ❤

Sometimes, when Steve went to sleep, he reached out a hand for something he knew wasn’t there. His fingers curled in the cream-colored sheets, felt the cold press of the night air against the fabric. Five months, and he still touched only this.

It was worse on nights like these, when the ice crept up on him, or when the train squealed in his ears. When he reached out and found nothing, his breath like ice and snow in his chest. Then he would shiver beneath his thick blankets and wonder where Tony was. Where _he_ was. (But that was his new normal now, along with the empty pit in his gut that counted the stretch of years.)

The apartment in the compound was dark, but Steve could see enough to know Tony was not in the room. It was too quiet for Tony to be working. Once again, Tony had stayed with him as he’d fallen asleep before slipping away. He closed his eyes and leaned his head back onto the pillow. His fingers curled into the sheets.

(This was how things were with them. This was always how they were.) He forced himself to go back to sleep. (Morning would come and bring with it the red of dawn.)

 

 

 

 

Tony had an aura around him. Brighter than the arc reactor, back when he had it, more effervescent than the ostentatious colors of his armor. He wore it on his skin like cream, until it burst from him in rays of energy. Of light. It glittered in his eyes.

(Those eyes would glitter at him, too, now, and somehow that energy would light in his chest, send his heart triphammering into a lindy hop.)

But Tony never let Steve pull him close when he kissed him, and Steve’s hands were starting to hesitate before they reached out.

He didn’t let Steve close, but he would pull Peter up close for a hug, jump onto Rhodes’ back like a monkey, curl his hands around Pepper’s like a lifeline, punch Happy on the arm with a grin. Tony liked touch. Just not too much. Not with Steve. (Not even when they made love.)

Steve’s fingers would fist at his sides, not knowing where to go.

 

 

 

 

Steve would sketch Tony in those instances when Tony was too deep in his work to notice. When he worked through the stacks of papers Ross would send him to keep him busy instead of saving the world. When he fell into a deep discussion with Pepper over the state of SI and its persnickety board members, or when he was speaking on a new venture for the company. When he lost himself to his muse, to the layouts spread in the air around him, lighting his face with the blue of the arc reactor, Friday’s words pressing on the space between Tony’s thoughts. (Tony was like magic, like the shocking sparks of electricity when it thrummed through a static lamp; it tingled anyone too close, lit the fire in their veins. He was lightning and thunder and the wild call of nature, an unmovable force in its quest forward. If Tony were an abstract painting, he would be orange and yellow and red, with just a single shot of circle-blue.)

When Tony caught him, he would duck his head, a sudden show of shyness that always made Steve want to capture the instant with his pencil. Tony would always find a way to distract him from doing so, until Steve had other things he wanted to draw. Until his hands were busy tracing instead.

 

 

 

 

He was okay about it. Okay with not being beside Tony at night, so long as that was what Tony needed. (Repeat that until it sounds real.) He thought it just another quirk.

And then Rhodey came to the compound for a week, and Steve found them in Tony’s lab together, and they were sleeping on the couch. Tony rested his head on Rhodey’s shoulder. Rhodey rested his head on top of Tony’s. The man hadn’t even changed from his uniform. (Green, the opposing color to Tony, so bright and warm and red.)

He loved Tony, but sometimes he wondered if that would ever be enough.

 

 

 

 

Sometimes it was better that Tony wasn’t around. Sometimes he dreamed of falling. When those nights came, the sheets would rip in his fists. He knew what his hands could do now. (He’d thought he’d known since the day he chased Erskine’s killer, but he’d been wrong. He hadn’t known just how far his shield could sink into armor.)

Then he would wake to cream-colored sheets and thick blue blankets, and he would tell himself that those moments were in the past. (The past was all he had.) He would look around at his empty room and be grateful to find himself alone. What would he have done to anyone unlucky enough to stand vanguard against his nightmares? Those moments were safer alone.

(Keep telling yourself that ‘til it’s real.)

 

 

 

 

Tony could fall asleep anywhere. On the chair while Vision floated through the TV screen, setting the other inhabitants off on a tirade. In his lab while DUM-E broke whatever Tony had been working on before his eyelids had won. On the floor, once, causing Steve’s heart to clog up his throat. But never in Steve’s room. Never next to Steve. (It wasn’t supposed to be an insult, but it was. Of course it was.)

Tony’s sleepy smile was like warmth and hearth, slow and sweet like cream. He caught it only twice. Once when they first started dating and Steve caught him in his lab. He’d made several doodles of Tony’s sleeping form, but the sight of him waking put those visions to shame. (Tony was always beautiful, always shining sunlight, but when those eyes first fluttered open in the morning, he looked more like the dawn.)

The second time Tony smiled like that had been when he’d found Tony sleeping with Rhodey. That time, unlike the first, he hadn’t been able to return it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sometimes he dreamed about his battle with Tony. Sometimes he woke to the feel of Tony’s chest beneath him, cracked like eggshells beneath his shield. Other times Tony wasn’t wearing his armor. (He would wake to the sound of Tony’s ribs cracking like glass. Those angry eyes would grow dim. Those times when he woke up, his fingers twisted in those cream-colored sheets, his gaze out amongst the dark blue night. He wished he could hear Tony’s heart beat next to him.)

 

 

 

 

Tony stayed in his lab more after Steve caught him sleeping with Rhodey. If Steve wanted to speak with him, he would have to pass through Tony’s glass walls and sit amongst Tony’s steel tables and white walls and bright blue holograms, and he would have to vie against all of that for Tony’s attention.

So he didn’t.

Another month passed, and six months after they’d begun dating, they were as strangers again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tony slept on the couch more often than in his room.

Steve would sometimes see him sleeping, but he no longer waited for him to wake. His nights were cold, even when he didn’t dream, but he would not bend. Until Tony could explain why he wouldn’t sleep next to Steve, Steve would not resume their relationship. And for some reason, Tony refused to tell him why.

He missed Tony. (He missed what could have been.)

 

 

 

 

This night, he couldn’t sleep.

It happened, sometimes. The nights got too cold, the white on the walls too thick. The flickering lights of the city glowed blue. He walked through the quiet halls to the kitchen, trying to ignore how empty the usually lively rooms were.

But when he got to the living room, he saw Tony on the couch again. Rhodes hadn’t come to the compound for a few weeks, and Tony had been on the couch more often than not because of it. Steve thought of Tony sleeping in bed beside Rhodes and roughly pushed the thought from his mind. (How many times had he told himself it wasn’t true?)

He moved to pass Tony and the couch, to pass into the kitchen and make some coffee, when he heard it.

 

 

 

 

He knew some nights he screamed. Friday had once called to him, trying to wake him up, doing little more than confusing him. (Peggy had never called him Captain, not ever, not once.) He knew some nights he must make some noise of discomfort, because he would go to sleep comfortable and wake up hot, shivering beneath the blankets even as he gasped for breath, blue and white transformed into fire. He knew he would sometimes call out Bucky’s name, because moments after he’d wake, and Friday would inform him of Bucky’s last known whereabouts.

(Some nights he made no sound at all, and would sit up suddenly where he slept, and Friday would unlock the cabinet that held the excess punching bags, and Steve wouldn’t leave the gym for hours.)

 

 

 

 

Sometimes Tony gave himself away. Sometimes he mumbled under his breath when he got frustrated with his work. Sometimes he popped his lips when he was thirsty. Sometimes he gave long, low grunts when he wanted his snacks and they weren’t within easy reach. Sometimes he rubbed his chest and hummed, making up for a song he no longer heard. Sometimes he hissed, when he forgot to hide his pain. Sometimes he whimpered when Steve teased him for a kiss.

Steve knew Tony’s sounds (perhaps more readily than he understood words). He knew when Tony was begging and in pain.

He rushed to the couch, anger and bitterness and coffee forgotten. Tony twitched on the couch, his lips pulled back. His hands trembled, one on his stomach, the other by his side. Steve caught one in his grip. “Tony,” he said, and watched those lips pull back farther, saw those teeth grind. “Tony, can you hear me?”

Tony’s eyes snapped open. He took one look at Steve and gasped. Steve caught the punch with his chin.

He fell back off the edge of the couch, rolled a moment on the floor before springing up, ready to fend off another attack. Instead Tony scrambled up on the edge of the couch, chocolate eyes wide as he watched Steve. One hand covered the middle of his chest. The other stood ready to fire. (Just a palm, but Steve knew. Steve knew.)

Steve dropped from his defensive stance. He didn’t want to be sure. He didn’t want to think what he thought.

(But he knew. He knew Tony better than almost anyone.)

He stood. “I’m leaving. You’re safe.” He left the room. With his enhanced hearing, he caught the shift in the couch as Tony finally relaxed, Steve safely gone from the room.

He shuddered.

 

 

 

 

Sometimes Steve couldn’t sleep. (Sometimes he didn’t want to.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sometimes there was fault to blame. Something a person could point to and say, “this is where it began.” Sometimes one could only point at people. Sometimes one could only point at names. Sometimes the fault was so lost within right and wrong it had neither of these. (Those were the times that left a man empty, trapped in the dark black of midnight.)

With nowhere to go, where did one heal? With nothing to blame, what did one change?

Steve apologized, and Tony apologized, and they wandered aimlessly in their shame. When they finally found a path again, it led them (desperate) to each other.

 

 

 

 

Sometimes Tony didn’t sleep with him.

Over a year into their rocky relationship, there were days and weeks in which they slept apart. Nights where Steve’s voice was too loud and Tony’s armor too cracked. Nights where all Tony could see was metal and blue.

But there were nights when Steve would wake from cold and feel warmth against his chest, arms around his waist. Nights where the white of the walls and the cream-colored sheets were out of reach beyond the tuft of Tony’s brown hair and the long line of uninterrupted skin. There were nights when the silence exploded with sound, the scratch of Tony’s beard on his shoulder and the gentle snore of Tony’s breath.

(There were nights when Steve felt metal in his hands and glass beneath his shield, and Tony could never be close enough, loud enough, to fill the void left in the wake of remembered destruction.)

Sometimes sometimes was enough.

(And when they kissed, they kissed like dawn.)


End file.
